Tag Archives: Grand Etang Forest Reserve

Richard’s daughter Leah arrived on January 16th after spending all day flying from Calgary via Dallas and San Juan, Puerto Rico. We planned on spending a few days exploring Grenada and then sailing in the Grenadines as far north as Bequia before returning to Grenada for her return flights to Calgary on January 31. We were surprised that she arrived on time and with all her bags.
We let her have an easy first day just taking her into St Georges and lunch at BB’s Crabback, our favorite restaurant in Grenada. A tradition there is putting your name and comments on the wall.
The next day we hired David to drive us around the southern half of the island. We stopped at Annandale Falls to see the botanical garden. Leah has just graduated with a degree in biology and we thought she would enjoy seeing the many different plants here. And we had to watch the divers do their stuff…We had a stop at the Grand Etang Lake, a crater lake about 1000 ft high in the center of the island. As we walked down to the lake we saw about a half dozen monkeys. We had brought bananas with us and they were very aggressive in trying to get them and then very quickly moved into the trees to eat them to prevent other monkeys from getting any. On the way back from the lake the monkeys came looking for more bananas and one actually bit Leah!We had a stop at the cocoa processing facility where they ferment the beans prior to drying them in the sun. Ladies walk through the trays once an hour to make sure they are evenly dried. If it starts raining the large trays of beans, which roll on tracks, are pushed under cover. Then the dried beans are packed into bags weighing 137.5 pounds.

On Thursday May 14th we left the Grenadines and headed for Hillsborough, Carriacou to check into Grenada. This was one of the few islands that required all crew to visit the immigration office. We are not sure if this was a result of the swine flu that seems to be making its way around the Caribbean.
We left the next day for St George’s and took a slip at the Port Louis Marina. We were surprised at how few boats were there considering how reasonable the rates were. We were joined on our dock by a $9 million Oyster 82 and a $6 million Oyster 62 (which is available to buy for anyone with a bit of spare cash…). Snowaway looks pretty small beside those sailboats.

We explored the island and enjoyed tours of three rum distilleries; Westerhall does not actually make its own rum anymore but imports rum from Trinidad, blends and bottles it, and sells it as Grenadian rum. The first distillery we visited was Clarkes Court, the second was Westerhall and the final was the River Antoine Rum Distillery. Clarkes Court produces one of our favourites, Old Grog, while we had trouble drinking the very strong River Antoine rum.

In the mountainous heart of Grenada is the Grand Etang Forest Reserve. There is a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano and unfortunately the day we stopped the views were foggy. However, there is a visitor centre where we were able to feed bananas to the local Mona Monkeys.

Grenada is known as the Spice Island and its most important spice is nutmeg. The fruit of the nutmeg tree is used to make jam, syrup and liqueurs. The red mace covers the nut that holds the nutmeg. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 destroyed over 90% of the nutmeg trees and they are just starting to come back. This has had a very negative effect on the economy with the loss of employment (particularly to the women).

We tried several of the local restaurants and our favorite was BB’s Crabback Caribbean Restaurant. Mike and Richard had the goat curry and claimed it was the best meal they had had in the Caribbean!!